Politics Blog

The GOP is making giant strides among rural voters:

Just a decade ago, Democrats were running neck-and-neck with Republicans for the votes of rural America.

No more.

This year, rural voters supported Republican congressional candidates by a 60 percent to 36 percent margin, according to an analysis of polls done after the November election. It was the third straight election in which the GOP has carried rural America by at least 59 percent.

As recently as 1988, Democrats won 56 percent of the rural vote. In 1992, the two parties split rural areas. In 1996, GOP candidates were favored by a relatively small margin, 52 percent to 48 percent.

Why is this increasing polarization betwern urban and rural areas good news? Because, in the Senate, most seats are in small or rural states. California has just as many Senate seats as Georgia. This geographic advantage will play well for the GOP in 2004.

My 2004 Senate analysis from late November is here. I’ll have an updated analysis every couple of months.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 30th, 2002 at 12:00 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.